


the informant

by kangeiko



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 06:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14539101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: The world has no contingency plans for this. Neither do the Avengers.





	the informant

**Author's Note:**

> I will write something more coherent and plot-orientated when I’ve had a chance to process the film. In the meantime, here’s my immediate, numbed, gut-punch reaction. 
> 
> The informant is the person who notifies the proper authorities about a death. Generally they have to be a family member or close relative, or someone who witnessed the death.

This is the part they don’t tell you about.

When you first did this - years and years ago, and still far too fresh in your mind - the process was a lot simpler. There was a certificate, and… well, there was a certificate. You went to the funeral and you came home and you knew what you had to do after that. (Keep living, mostly. It always boils down to that.)

That doesn’t really work as an option anymore. Half the world is missing, and those that are left live in a system where a piece of paper and condolences are not enough. 

“What more,” you ask, and your voice rasps, “could they possibly want?”

Rhodey shrugs, helpless. Defeated. “We’re missing… I don’t know. A lot of it. There’s no medical certificate, so we can’t get the death certificate, so we can’t get... anything else.”

You look back down at your list. 

Bucky is easy; Bucky can wait. (It sounds terrible - it _is_ terrible - but it’s also true. Bucky has no one other than you.) Sam left behind a sister, a nephew, and a mother, and they are entitled to… something. You’re not sure what, but Tony had provided for each of you, and even though none of you had touched those balances in all the time you’d been apart, there is no time for delicacy now. Sam’s mother will need a nursing home soon, and his sister lost her brother and her husband and had a small child to raise. 

The banks will not release the funds without a death certificate. The registrar will not issue one without a medical certificate. The doctor will not issue one for a missing person. There can be no funeral because there are no bodies, and you can’t have a memorial for someone not legally dead. (Not yet.)

In any other circumstances, it would be tragic but bearable. Provisions could be made, how tragic for the family, pay your respects and be on your way. 

“But - they can’t do that,” you say, and there is a helplessness to your voice that fills you with rage. To come all this way, and to be defeated by _this_. “There’s over three billion people missing, how can they do that?”

“They don’t know what else to do,” Rhodey says quietly. “They were talking about a check-in for the survivors, but… there’s a high risk that they’ll miss the most vulnerable. The homeless, the elderly, the abused. This way is slower, but at least they won’t… they won’t...” He’s looking down at his own list, one much longer than yours. (You have Bucky on your list, and Sam, but Clint had arrived - thank god, thank _God_ \- and taken Wanda, and of course the Dora were making all necessary arrangements for T’Challa. Vision had a body but no legal status, and they had interred him in a vault in Birnin Zana, to be watched and protected from thieves by the Wakandan guards.) Rhodey’s list is a lot longer; a life lived well. (A lengthy, itemised, categorised inventory of loss.)

“But, with witnesses…”

“Yeah,” Rhodey says. “Yeah, at least I can get Pepper processed.” He can’t do anything for the others. No one had seen Happy disappear. No one could find Rhodey’s family (all of them, any of them). And Tony…

“What about Tony?”

Rhodey shakes his head. “With him, I think they’ll force the full seven years.”

“He could have survived,” you say, and there is an awful note in your voice, too thin and reedy to be true hope. (You don’t dare to hope. You can’t. Not after you watched half the world melt away under your fingertips.) “He could have -“

“Yeah,” Rhodey says, and it sounds painful. “Yeah, he could have.”

He could be out there right now, stranded alone on some ship, some planet, with no way to come home. He could be slowly suffocating, waiting for a rescue that would never come. 

“I’ll help,” you say after a moment. “I’ll - I’ll fill in what I can for Sam, and then I’ll help.”

Rhodey looks back down at the list in front of him. Medical certificate; death certificate; probate; IRS. It is the minutiae of loss, writ large across a world wholly unable to cope. 

Shuri has offered you all sanctuary in Wakanda. She is Queen now, looking small and frightened and far too young to have lost all those around her. M’Baku and Okoye do what they can for their Queen, and there has been no talk of challenge, no rumble of rebellion. 

You could stay here, all of you. You could choose to stay and to help Wakanda rebuild, and to mourn your dead under a wide blue sky.

You look across at Rhodey, at his hand hovering over his phone, halted in its motion as if he has forgotten what he intended to do. (He needs to call whoever still exists at the State Department. It’s right there on his list, under ‘Other - Avengers Business’, the work that would have been done by Tony, if Tony was here. If Tony had lived.) His mouth is a little open, his eyes on the open windows. 

_Earth has lost its greatest defender,_ you told Ross those scant days ago, and you know what you have to do. If Tony is alive - alone and stranded, dying by inches, waiting for you to do the impossible -

(There’s no spaceship, no miracle. There is no one riding to the rescue.)

Your hand closes around Rhodey’s gently. “Rhodey,” you say in another man’s voice. “Rhodey, let me do that.” 

(He could still be alive, a part of you thinks, and you hope against hope it isn’t true.)

*

fin


End file.
